Brocton & Milford

Yesterday was day two of the three-day coaching course in Sheffield. Driving up and back in the fog wasn’t much fun, but at least the bad weather meant that the roads weren’t as clogged as they were last time. After some work on teaching compass use, most of the day was spent practising coaching at Level 3 on the Step System. Steph Young and I were given relocation. I think the exercise we worked out was good fun, but it was pretty tricky to explain to our pupils…

Split into pairs; one person in each pair is A, the other B. There are two maps – A can only look at the A map, B only at the B map. A navigates to the first control on his map. B then navigates to the first control on her map, the only problem being that she doesn’t know where A has taken her to. When she finds her first control, she navigates to her second control. Then A can look at his map again, and he now has the problem of navigating to a control from an unknown starting point. Was that clear?

Today was cold again but clear and I took Catherine up to the Walton Chasers regional event. There we met C’s schoolfriend Mollie and her dad and we all went round the string course and the white course. The string course was excellent, but the White wasn’t ideal. At 1.8 km it was outside the guidelines, and the walk to the start was even longer! (it took us an hour and a half altogether.) Another problem was that the 200-metre route from the start punch to the start flag was along a narrow path, and the girls were in danger of being flattened by burly lycra-clad Yorkshiremen! Perhaps there should’ve been a separate junior/colour-coded start??

So we got plenty of exercise, and honours were even: C beat M by 6 seconds on the String, and M beat C by 3 seconds on the White!